7 ms·

Alf.io: open-source ticket reservation system

234 points by robbya 7y ago

lub 7y ago
relevant: https://pretix.eu/about/en/ https://pretix.eu/about/en/ , which is used e.g. by the 36C3
conception 7y ago
The try it now asks for an email and password with no way to know what to put in there or sign up for anything.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  I believe it accepts anything. I used test@example.com with example.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
PostgreSQL database with 25k Java/Spring codebase locked into Stripe APIs. I guess it will fit some people's use cases, but my impression of Java is that refactoring anything, like changing from Stripe to some other payment provider, will take months.
- ydnaclementine 7y ago
  Less about Java and more about the code pattern around it.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Yeah, I've written a lot of Java, and I'd be happy to inherit a well-tested, well-factored Java code base. The language is more of a pain, but automated tools like IntelliJ's refactoring tools (which depend on Java's explicitness) make up for a fair bit of that. But as you say, the patterns encouraged in the "enterprise" space are often terrible, so I'm automatically suspicious of anything like that.
- lol768 7y ago
  It supports PayPal: https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/java/alfio/manager/payment/PayPalManager.java https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/j... And Revolut's business API: https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/java/alfio/manager/payment/RevolutBankTransferManager.java https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/j... So adding new payment methods can't be that difficult
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    Paypal took from May 12 to July 28 (https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/issues/77 https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/issues/77), and Revolut took from March 18 to April 8 (https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/pull/622 https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/pull/622). Maybe "a few weeks" is a better estimate for the difficulty, but it's certainly not a weekend project.
    - syjer 7y ago
      Hi, one of the devs here. I would like to clarify that this project has been developed as a side-project, it's not (at least, during that timeframe) our main work. So don't take the time to develop a feature as a 100% full time work :)
- vbsteven 7y ago
  Why do you think this is the case? They have a PaymentProvider interface and multiple implementations for PayPal and Stripe. Should not be that much work to add another provider.
dredmorbius 7y ago
That landing page needs a brief description of what this actually does, and links to more detailed technical docs -- features, requirements, use cases, etc. Knowing that it's all fluffy happy Open Source is Nice to Know, but shouldn't be the First And Most Significant Selling Point. Post based on one of my popular early HN comments: "Please Forward to Marketing: How to present your products to customers (or would-be customers)" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_...
- vertex-four 7y ago
  To be fair, Alf appears to be the open-source backend of a commercial service with a more marketing-focused website - https://swicket.io/ https://swicket.io/
- Aperocky 7y ago
  From quick look most of these are frontend/client features?
- cheschire 7y ago
  I spent at least sixty seconds on the page and still have no idea what a ticket reservation system is. Is it some sort of RPC handler? A ticketmaster for small non-profit venues? An embedded device OS for barbershops?
- cbellone 7y ago
  Lead dev here, thanks for the feedback. The new website is WIP, it will contain more info and a comprehensive user doc. Preview: https://alfio.netlify.com/ https://alfio.netlify.com/ Any feedback would be highly appreciated.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Much better. These two paragraphs tell me much of what I need to know, and whether or not I'm interested in the product: Alf.io is a free and open source event attendance management system, developed for event organizers who care about privacy, security and fair pricing policy for their customers. It features an ecosystem of tools to cover the lifecycle of an event from ticket distribution, to event management, to reporting. It's difficult when you're deeply immersed in a project or product, but "ticket" can have many meanings, from issue tracking to events to traffic citations to various inter-process communications tools.
bvandewalle 7y ago
Hopefully someone "disrupts" the events and ticketing industry. Buying a ticket to anything has been hell lately. Terrible UX and 10/20$ of added random fees (Ticketmaster, Live nation, etc ...). I sadly bet that this is more a business issue than a technical issue.
- telesilla 7y ago
  It's well known that these companies pad the ticket price and share it with the production team. It's how ticket prices can increase without customers feeling it is, and the ticket company gets to be the bad guy, not the musician.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    I believe they also make exclusive deals with venues such that the venues get paid for signing. And after TicketMaster's merger with LiveNation, the same company owns both venues and ticketing, making it even harder for anybody to compete.
- Multiplayer 7y ago
  You'd want to take a deep dive on how arena entertainment works. Here's the headline: Live Music is a loss leader for alcohol sales. 95% of the gate goes to the acts, and some of the alcohol depending on whether you are jimmy buffet or not. Like 3rd party insurance, no one is really in a position to care about the ticket experience or expense. The artist cares about getting the right venues and the right tour routing. The venue cares about getting the right artists with the right age groups. And thanks to vertical integration a company that owns the largest ticket service, manages acts, manages tours and owns festivals, nightclubs AND arena venues... well, ticketing is doing just fine. There's no one really to leverage a new solutions. source: friend was former ceo of tickets.com
  - bvandewalle 7y ago
    Thanks for the good overview. It's exactly what I thought: a mix and match of different incentives that makes it pretty much impossible to change the current system.
sprain 7y ago
I am in the event ticketing business. It currently feels like a new provider appears every other day as the entry bar is very low. The tricky parts start when you realize how diverse event organizers‘ needs actually are. Nonetheless, as a result there are many user-friendly alternatives to the few big names available nowadays. But it‘s a slow moving market and it will take some more time for them to win the trust of large organizers. I am sure, though, the change _will_ come.
- imglorp 7y ago
  If the big names weren't so predatory, invasive, and abusive maybe there would be less pressure to avoid them?
Zaskoda 7y ago
If you want to make a dent in the ticket market, come up with a solution that Burning Man will adopt. Their system almost never performs correctly. Every year something new goes wrong and thousands of people take to online forums to complain about bugs such as being kicked out of queues or not having their preregistration links work at all. If someone can earn BM's business, then they'll likely get a ton of business from their regional network of smaller events.
- the-dude 7y ago
  Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
weinzierl 7y ago
If you are interested in this because you are organizing a conference you might like frab [1]. It is a free and open source conference management system that is primarily used by the Chaos Computer Club for Chaos Communication Congress and other conferences. [1] https://github.com/frab/frab/wiki https://github.com/frab/frab/wiki
cyborgx7 7y ago
Alternatively, this is what ccc has been using for their events, like the congress, for a while now. https://github.com/pretix/pretix https://github.com/pretix/pretix
- nsomaru 7y ago
  The enterprise pricing is way out of reach for the African market
atomize 7y ago
Followed the link expecting to see an open source support ticket solution. I quickly remembered that there are other types of tickets...
ghego1 7y ago
I like the concept and it looks like an interesting project, however still AngularJS + Bower for the frontend? You could probably benefit a lot from switching to Angular > 8, I have done it for several projects and it's totally worth it. If you need help let me know.
- syjer 7y ago
  Hi, You are right about angular. We already have done 50% of the work, as we have the "customer" facing part done in angular 8 (https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io-public-frontend https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io-public-frontend). In the next release (M3) we will convert the "admin" part too (we are targeting a new frontend built with angular material) :)
  - ghego1 7y ago
    Awesome! Didn't notice the client frontend, great job!
lucasverra 7y ago
Congrats on show ! Why should i use this instead of free eventbrite ?
- cbellone 7y ago
  if you're happy with their terms&conditions and privacy policy, and you don't need to print badges on-site, then there's no reason to change. Otherwise, we offer you an alternative :)

234 points by robbya 7y ago

lub 7y ago

relevant: https://pretix.eu/about/en/ https://pretix.eu/about/en/ , which is used e.g. by the 36C3

conception 7y ago

The try it now asks for an email and password with no way to know what to put in there or sign up for anything.

scarejunba 7y ago
I believe it accepts anything. I used test@example.com with example.

Mathnerd314 7y ago

PostgreSQL database with 25k Java/Spring codebase locked into Stripe APIs. I guess it will fit some people's use cases, but my impression of Java is that refactoring anything, like changing from Stripe to some other payment provider, will take months.

ydnaclementine 7y ago
Less about Java and more about the code pattern around it.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Yeah, I've written a lot of Java, and I'd be happy to inherit a well-tested, well-factored Java code base. The language is more of a pain, but automated tools like IntelliJ's refactoring tools (which depend on Java's explicitness) make up for a fair bit of that. But as you say, the patterns encouraged in the "enterprise" space are often terrible, so I'm automatically suspicious of anything like that.
lol768 7y ago
It supports PayPal: https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/java/alfio/manager/payment/PayPalManager.java https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/j... And Revolut's business API: https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/java/alfio/manager/payment/RevolutBankTransferManager.java https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/blob/master/src/main/j... So adding new payment methods can't be that difficult
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  Paypal took from May 12 to July 28 (https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/issues/77 https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/issues/77), and Revolut took from March 18 to April 8 (https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/pull/622 https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io/pull/622). Maybe "a few weeks" is a better estimate for the difficulty, but it's certainly not a weekend project.
  - syjer 7y ago
    Hi, one of the devs here. I would like to clarify that this project has been developed as a side-project, it's not (at least, during that timeframe) our main work. So don't take the time to develop a feature as a 100% full time work :)
vbsteven 7y ago
Why do you think this is the case? They have a PaymentProvider interface and multiple implementations for PayPal and Stripe. Should not be that much work to add another provider.

dredmorbius 7y ago

That landing page needs a brief description of what this actually does, and links to more detailed technical docs -- features, requirements, use cases, etc. Knowing that it's all fluffy happy Open Source is Nice to Know, but shouldn't be the First And Most Significant Selling Point. Post based on one of my popular early HN comments: "Please Forward to Marketing: How to present your products to customers (or would-be customers)" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_...

vertex-four 7y ago
To be fair, Alf appears to be the open-source backend of a commercial service with a more marketing-focused website - https://swicket.io/ https://swicket.io/
Aperocky 7y ago
From quick look most of these are frontend/client features?
cheschire 7y ago
I spent at least sixty seconds on the page and still have no idea what a ticket reservation system is. Is it some sort of RPC handler? A ticketmaster for small non-profit venues? An embedded device OS for barbershops?
cbellone 7y ago
Lead dev here, thanks for the feedback. The new website is WIP, it will contain more info and a comprehensive user doc. Preview: https://alfio.netlify.com/ https://alfio.netlify.com/ Any feedback would be highly appreciated.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Much better. These two paragraphs tell me much of what I need to know, and whether or not I'm interested in the product: Alf.io is a free and open source event attendance management system, developed for event organizers who care about privacy, security and fair pricing policy for their customers. It features an ecosystem of tools to cover the lifecycle of an event from ticket distribution, to event management, to reporting. It's difficult when you're deeply immersed in a project or product, but "ticket" can have many meanings, from issue tracking to events to traffic citations to various inter-process communications tools.

bvandewalle 7y ago

Hopefully someone "disrupts" the events and ticketing industry. Buying a ticket to anything has been hell lately. Terrible UX and 10/20$ of added random fees (Ticketmaster, Live nation, etc ...). I sadly bet that this is more a business issue than a technical issue.

telesilla 7y ago
It's well known that these companies pad the ticket price and share it with the production team. It's how ticket prices can increase without customers feeling it is, and the ticket company gets to be the bad guy, not the musician.
- wpietri 7y ago
  I believe they also make exclusive deals with venues such that the venues get paid for signing. And after TicketMaster's merger with LiveNation, the same company owns both venues and ticketing, making it even harder for anybody to compete.
Multiplayer 7y ago
You'd want to take a deep dive on how arena entertainment works. Here's the headline: Live Music is a loss leader for alcohol sales. 95% of the gate goes to the acts, and some of the alcohol depending on whether you are jimmy buffet or not. Like 3rd party insurance, no one is really in a position to care about the ticket experience or expense. The artist cares about getting the right venues and the right tour routing. The venue cares about getting the right artists with the right age groups. And thanks to vertical integration a company that owns the largest ticket service, manages acts, manages tours and owns festivals, nightclubs AND arena venues... well, ticketing is doing just fine. There's no one really to leverage a new solutions. source: friend was former ceo of tickets.com
- bvandewalle 7y ago
  Thanks for the good overview. It's exactly what I thought: a mix and match of different incentives that makes it pretty much impossible to change the current system.

sprain 7y ago

I am in the event ticketing business. It currently feels like a new provider appears every other day as the entry bar is very low. The tricky parts start when you realize how diverse event organizers‘ needs actually are. Nonetheless, as a result there are many user-friendly alternatives to the few big names available nowadays. But it‘s a slow moving market and it will take some more time for them to win the trust of large organizers. I am sure, though, the change _will_ come.

imglorp 7y ago
If the big names weren't so predatory, invasive, and abusive maybe there would be less pressure to avoid them?

Zaskoda 7y ago

If you want to make a dent in the ticket market, come up with a solution that Burning Man will adopt. Their system almost never performs correctly. Every year something new goes wrong and thousands of people take to online forums to complain about bugs such as being kicked out of queues or not having their preregistration links work at all. If someone can earn BM's business, then they'll likely get a ton of business from their regional network of smaller events.

the-dude 7y ago
Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.

weinzierl 7y ago

If you are interested in this because you are organizing a conference you might like frab [1]. It is a free and open source conference management system that is primarily used by the Chaos Computer Club for Chaos Communication Congress and other conferences. [1] https://github.com/frab/frab/wiki https://github.com/frab/frab/wiki

cyborgx7 7y ago

Alternatively, this is what ccc has been using for their events, like the congress, for a while now. https://github.com/pretix/pretix https://github.com/pretix/pretix

nsomaru 7y ago
The enterprise pricing is way out of reach for the African market

atomize 7y ago

Followed the link expecting to see an open source support ticket solution. I quickly remembered that there are other types of tickets...

ghego1 7y ago

I like the concept and it looks like an interesting project, however still AngularJS + Bower for the frontend? You could probably benefit a lot from switching to Angular > 8, I have done it for several projects and it's totally worth it. If you need help let me know.

syjer 7y ago
Hi, You are right about angular. We already have done 50% of the work, as we have the "customer" facing part done in angular 8 (https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io-public-frontend https://github.com/alfio-event/alf.io-public-frontend). In the next release (M3) we will convert the "admin" part too (we are targeting a new frontend built with angular material) :)
- ghego1 7y ago
  Awesome! Didn't notice the client frontend, great job!

lucasverra 7y ago

Congrats on show ! Why should i use this instead of free eventbrite ?

cbellone 7y ago
if you're happy with their terms&conditions and privacy policy, and you don't need to print badges on-site, then there's no reason to change. Otherwise, we offer you an alternative :)